Non-Traditional Publishing

Monday, March 21, 2011 was a big day for publishing. On one hand, we have author Barry Eisler announcing he turned down a two book, $500,000 deal. On the other hand, we learned that super-hot indie author Amanda Hocking is shopping a new series, with a price tag climbing above $1 million for worldwide English […]

Today, we welcome the genius Brett Sandusky, chief provocateur behind Publishr, a site focused on exploring the issues behind new publishing business models and challenges. A few weeks ago, Brett announced plans for a new publishing, er, Publishng project. Today, he expands upon his vision: Let’s start at the beginning: what is Publishr? Publishr is […]

In last week’s post, I noted some of the questions our South by Southwest panel received from the audience. One, in particular, needed more time and space to address: what’s the deal with publishing and its slow adoption of transmedia storytelling, a concept that includes some types of enhanced ebooks. According the person asking the […]

Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it. Consumer expectations will rise if prices do Over the weekend, we rode a rollercoaster as Macmillan laid out its demands for ebook pricing to Amazon, and Amazon responded by pulling (nearly) all Macmillan titles from its store. Late Sunday, Amazon announced they would […]

Short answer: nobody knows. Longer answer: the magic elixir publishers are injecting into ebooks in hopes they will entice people to pay higher prices. As you might guess, I am a bit of an “enhancement” skeptic. I have a few reasons. First, they feel like an attempt to skip the walking phase. Right now ebooks […]

As you might imagine, I am still dissecting the past few months, and today I want to focus on business model. Some of this might seem antithetical to how publishing does business (I actually don’t think so, not if you think about it). It will definitely make some people uncomfortable because it links the actual […]

This week’s publishing industry debate started when the Wall Street Journal covered Sourcebooks’ release strategy for Bran Hambric: The Fairfield Curse. The article contained some blunt discussion about why the publisher chose to delay the ebook and why others are doing the same. This peek behind the curtain didn’t sit will with readers, exposing tensions […]

Last week, the Internets were treated to a rather whiny post from an author who felt that agents were the only thing standing between her and literary greatness. The truth of the matter is that it’s a tough business out there, and sometimes it takes talent plus a little something extra to get your work […]

[BS: Today we bring you a guest post from Joanna Penn, from The Creative Penn blog. As publishing changes, we’re seeing increased overlap between worlds that previously seemed like publishing silos. Where do you fall in the quadrant?] There have been a few posts in the publishing blog world recently that seem to set certain […]

It should come as no surprise that a group of enterprising Amazon customers have joined together to boycott Kindle books priced about $9.99. I’ve been holding my own private boycott for months now, for reasons stated at great length (sorry, Christopher Moore, you were an unwitting catalyst and victim, though another author was a winner). […]